Ken Kuhlken_Hickey Family Mystery 01 (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

Hickey got up from where he knelt beside Lefty. For a while he stood glaring at the sky over Tijuana. Every half-minute or so he kicked the limousine’s tire or rear fender. Then he looked down at Lefty, where he lay making the damndest sounds, sucks and gargles through the bullet hole in his throat.

He was a wise guy, but a decent kid. And Hickey stood there in a cool rage—vowing to beat Mofeto and the German and whoever had Wendy Rose. He bent and snatched up the gun beside Lefty, and stuck it into his own empty holster. Then he picked up Lefty’s coat that had got thrown aside. In an outside pocket he found the Jeep key.

The slug had split Lefty’s windpipe and passed out the back of his neck. Sometimes he couldn’t get enough air, and he thrashed around as if he was having a seizure. If not for the nurse who ran from the clinic shack and cleared the pool of blood from Lefty’s windpipe, and put his head on her lap to calm him, he might’ve died from thrashing and gulping. One time Hickey needed to hold him down, until Boyle showed with a stretcher and they belted Lefty to it.

An ambulance came from Ream Field. A minute later it was gone. Hickey watched it speed away, then he walked straight for Coco’s Licores.

He bought a liter of Mescal Carlos, crossed the road to the riverbank, and sat on the ground staring at the whitest part of the sky. He took a long pull on the bottle, caught some deep breaths, and downed a few more swallows, thinking how their lieutenant would show before long, see Hickey was gone, AWOL. Not likely they’d hang him. Probably toss him into the brig. Anyway, he wasn’t going to stand there rousting drunks while Nazis and Mexican goons were holding the girl and shooting his partners.

Finally he capped the bottle, stuck it into his pocket, and looked around. Tito and Clifford watched him from a hundred yards away, over beside the limo parked next to the coffee and taco stand.

The kid still appeared in shock, pale and dreamy, a lot like his sister when she danced at the Club de Paris.

Tito’s old Stetson was on backward. He puffed on a brown cigarette. His free hand couldn’t find a place to rest. It touched his hair, his shirt, scratched his ear.

As he neared them, Hickey asked the cabbie, “You still gonna skip town?”

“I don’t know boss. Maybe I leave now, but maybe too I go see Mofeto first. I got to think.”

“You better forget El Mofeto.”

Tito leaned back against his car. “A long time I been watching that one. I can tell you what dogs he’s fucking and how many times he spits every day.”

“Well,” Hickey said, “if you’re figuring to take him on, you might want this.” He pulled off his jacket, unhitched the holster with the .45 Colt he’d swiped from Lefty, passed the holster and gun to Tito, who grinned like somebody proud of his teeth. He pulled the gun and stared awhile before he shoved it back into the holster and strapped it around his waist. He turned and caught a picture of himself in the window of his limo, and cocked his hat straight.

“Think you could catch him alive, if you took along some help?”

Tito pulled out a smoke and a match he torched with his fingernail. “Maybe. Say for two hundred I think about it.”

Hickey nodded, took a business card and a hundred dollars from his wallet and passed them over. “Call this number, let me know what’s up. And whatever happens, we meet at midnight. You know Las Brisas?”

“Sure.”

Then Hickey told the cabbie where else he’d be tonight, at Luz’s place, and how to get there. Finally he clapped Tito’s shoulder, motioned for Clifford to follow him, and started toward the limo. As they walked, the kid drawled, “I think he’s gonna die.”

Hickey didn’t know if the kid was talking about Lefty or Tito. Either way, he said, “Naw,” then lightly, trying to lift Clifford’s spirits, he asked, “How’d you like getting shot at? Starts the blood pumping, no?”

The kid looked off into space for a while, walking crookedly. “Where we going, Pop?”

“Find Leo. And if he wants to sock you back, don’t look at me to stop him.”

Boyle stood alone at the one open drive-through gate, and Hickey stepped that way with homicide on his mind. Sure Boyle had alerted the Mexicans when they crossed the line, he pictured his fist mashing the double-crosser’s nose. But he just glared, for now. Looking everyplace except at Hickey, Boyle said, “There’s a lieutenant at the office wants to see you. Wants to know what all the shooting was about.”

“You tell him,” Hickey snarled, and poked a finger into Boyle’s chest. “See you later, pal.”

He and Clifford walked behind some cars, keeping out of view of the office shack, and hustled past the clinic shack to the gravel parking lot, where they found the Jeep. Hickey took out the key that he’d snatched off Lefty. They hopped in, sped out of there. It was 5:20. Hickey had plenty to do before midnight.

***

At the office building on Broadway, the three flights of stairs made him feel the sleep he’d missed, the mescal he’d drunk, the faint spell he’d had, and his thirty-seven years.

Leo Weiss lay in the desk chair puffing on a smoke, with his big argyle feet on the desk. “Say,” he droned, “you’re the guys I been waiting for.” He killed his cigarette on the side of his desk, then tossed the butt about ten feet, dead center into a trash can. “Mr. Rose, you and me are gonna have a talk.”

Clifford looked away at the window that glowed twilight red. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Save it awhile,” Hickey said. “We got gunned. Lefty’s pretty bad. He’ll make it, though.”

Leo sat up at attention, while he listened to the story in brief, and Hickey said, “You with us?”

“Hell, Tom, why should I be? You gonna pay?”

“Yeah.”

“With what?”

“You’ll see.”

“And you think the kid’ll pay you back someday, right? Well, forget it. Look, Tom, you got a whole town full of Mexicans, and then you got Germans and cops. On the other side, your side …” He scowled at Hickey and Clifford.

“Point is,” Hickey said, “I’m the kind of guy who gets nightmares, and I don’t want to have ’em because I got spooked and left this little girl down there. You wanta know the truth, losing Elizabeth and Madeline took a big notch outa me. If I lose another hunk of pride, what’ll be left, I don’t know. Besides, these del Montes, skunks and Germans, cops, they got me pissed. I’m declaring war.”

“Lord, how many times will this guy throw me to the wolves?” Leo implored, gazing above then at Hickey. “Okay, Tom. I’ll do some legwork. Snatching the girl’s all yours.”

“Swell,” Hickey said. “Here’s the plan. I’ve gotta talk to some guys. Clifford’ll stay here by the phone, like a dispatcher, see.”

“No. Darn, Pop, that’s no—”

“
Because
they’re gunning for us in TJ, but they don’t know Leo. So he’s going down to snoop that joint in the Lomas, Casa de Oro, while you and me keep out of sight.”

The kid stood with his mouth open, one hand poised in the air, and Hickey turned to Leo. “How about it?”

“I got no previous engagements, except with the kid here.”

Hickey told him dress rich, splash with cologne, after his bath, and take some gambling money. He could spend a few hours at the Casa de Oro, then meet Hickey and the cabbie at midnight at Las Brisas on the cliffs at Playas de Tijuana. And meanwhile, to lend him some cash.

Leo dug out three twenties. Then Hickey called his old home phone, told Captain Curtis the bayside cottage was his if he’d bring a down payment to Hickey’s attorney by tomorrow.

Finally, he told Clifford, “You stay here by the phone all night, understand? Leo’s gonna call and maybe Tito, and me.” He gave the kid a chuck on the arm. “Keep your guard up, and don’t worry. Old men can’t hit so hard.”

***

At 6:40, after a stop at the barracks, a change into his uniform, phone calls to his lawyer and to Al Smythe, Hickey raced the Jeep up Harbor Drive to Laurel Street and turned east up the pretty green mesa they called “Pill Hill,” where the doctors presided.

The Naval Hospital might’ve been a medieval city during the Black Plague. Bigger than a mile square, it took up dozens of buildings that used to be gyms, recital halls, cafés. The Navy had commandeered Balboa Park from the zoo down to the eucalyptus groves, and filled it with half-dead boys. The wounded lay stacked three floors deep on beds that encircled the bones of dinosaurs, or beneath paintings of beautiful women. Still more boys lay in garages, in tents large as football fields, in dressing rooms behind the Shakespearian stage.

If Lefty wasn’t in the Quonset near the gate where they usually kept the poor chumps who got knifed by pimps or pachucos, it could take hours to find him in all this mess.

The MP armband took him through the gate fast. He pulled up beside the Quonset, jumped down. For a minute he listened to faraway screams and guttural shouts of outrage, then he got hit by the smells—blood, lye, burned skin, guts—which made his desires seem pointless and his intrigues small. He walked into the Quonset, talked to a nurse who checked a list and sent him two Quonsets farther down, from where he got sent to a tin bus garage near the zoo, where he finally caught up with his partner.

They had Lefty’s neck wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage. A tube ran through the middle of it, and hooked into a gadget beside the bed. He lay still with his eyes closed. Hickey looked at the weary, freckled nurse. Suddenly a bell clanged and she ran off. A hyena brayed above the human cries. Hickey tapped the boy’s arm, watched the eyes, until they finally blinked open and drifted up.

“Yeah, I know. I owe you a big one. For starts I’m going after those gunmen. But you gotta tell me—Boyle set us up?”

Lefty’s mouth opened but stuck there, and Hickey said, “Try this—did he phone anybody just after we left?”

The boy’s chin moved slightly down. A gibbon screamed, and Hickey sighed. “Thanks, partner. I’ll come back tomorrow. Bring you a pinup girl.”

As Hickey drove out of the park and off Pill Hill, the last quarter of sun dropped into the Pacific. Beyond the sprawl of Consolidated Aircraft draped in its camouflage net, the harbor flashed and glittered. Palms along shore bent in a gust of warm breeze. On a trolley car chugging up 5th Street, an old black woman leaned out the window, singing loudly. But Hickey missed it all, with his mind at the border, on Boyle, and back at the park with Lefty, and out searching for Wendy Rose. He forgot to speed. He arrived late at the warehouse alongside the Broadway pier. Lieutenant Smythe, a sweaty little man, glanced up as if peering around a corner, then turned back to nibbling the rim of his coffee mug. Without a word, Hickey stepped over, poured himself a cup. Smythe gave Hickey a wicked little smile. “Where’s my salute?”

Hickey sneered, sat on the desk and swallowed his coffee. Then he got out his checkbook and wrote one for $200. He slapped it into Smythe’s waiting paw. “That’s for the Jeep. Now, how many Colts will twenty bucks get me?”

“How many you need?”

“A dozen, at least, the way things been going. But I’ll settle for three.”

Smythe nodded, got up and waddled away down a row of shelves. “Shells too,” Hickey yelled after him, “and throw in a skein of rope.”

Hickey downed another cup of thick coffee, took a shopping bag from Smythe, muttered thanks, and walked out.

He sped south and reached the highway just as honest dark fell. In the clear air under a moon that’d be full in a couple days, he could see pretty well, even with the browned headlights. Sidewinding Mexican produce trucks ran him onto the shoulder. He made the border at 8:15. He hitched the skein of rope onto his belt, loaded a .45 revolver, strapped on his shoulder holster and stuffed the gun into it.

He took out his briar. Fired up a bowl of Sir Raleigh. Told himself that of all the stupid acts he’d done, this next one might be tops. His lips felt parched. He took a sip of mescal, washed it around his mouth and swallowed. Finally he climbed out of the Jeep, heaved the duffel bag over his shoulder, and moved toward the line.

Just the one drive-through gate was open, manned by Lefty’s replacement, a new MP called Alvarez who’d gone through boot camp with Hickey and Clifford, and by Mr. Chee, a civilian. He was the oldest guard and a friend of Hickey since the night a couple drunk Marines called Mr. Chee a Jap, and one guy shoved him—Hickey caught that guy blindside with a right jab.

“What say, Pop?” Alvarez called out. “Decide to work for a while?”

“Naw. I gotta look for the stiff who shot Lefty. They send anybody down there to investigate yet?”

“No siree,” Mr. Chee said. “They put the sign up again.” He pointed overhead between the gates to a canvas banner that read,
tijuana and vicinity off limits to u.s. military personnel
—the same one they posted for a few days about every other week, when another gringo got killed or disappeared over the border.

“What about Mexican cops? Anybody call ’em in?”

“No siree,” Mr. Chee said.

“Well, then, I hope you boys can cover for me. And Boyle. He’s coming too. I figure the shooters are friends of his. See, I’ve been working on a case down in TJ, a missing girl, and Boyle’s got these friends that pay so he tips them off when I’m going down. Then they have fun chasing me.”

Mr. Chee folded his hands on his chin and nodded. “Boyle has unfortunate friends.”

“I’m gonna treat him to a vacation,” Hickey said, and turned to the walk-through gate. He stepped halfway, paused for a second, glaring at Boyle who’d been watching him close and now squared off, yet tried to look casual, even with a hand on the butt of his gun. In the dim light he hadn’t seen Hickey already draw his Colt. It pointed straight out from his chest, at Boyle’s nose.

“Slow night, huh, partner?”

Boyle’s eyes locked on the pistol. “Yeah, Tom. You got a beef with me?”

“Sure do.” Hickey reached out, brushed the fink’s hand off the gun butt, snatched the customized police .38—polished to a gleam, the barrel engraved “for my darling,” teak and cherry wood laminated grip—out of the holster and stuck it under his own belt. “Let’s have a stroll by the river.”

When Boyle hollered, “The nut’s gonna kill me,” old Mr. Chee scrunched his face and shook his head.